1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a clad member in which a different kind of material is partly embedded in a clad base material. It also relates to a method of manufacturing the clad member.
In this specification, the term "clad member" means a "metal-clad semimanufacture" which is made by cladding or overlaying a specified metal on a surface of a "clad base material" which means a base material (i.e., a metal or a ceramic) on which the specified metal is clad or overlaid.
2. Description of the Related Art
As this kind of clad member, there is conventionally known one which is manufactured by the following steps Namely, as shown in FIG. 1, a groove b is formed, by means of rolling or the like, in a clad base material "a" of an elongated copper plate. A strip-like material c, such as nickel, which is different in kind from that of the clad base material is fitted into the groove b, and the assembly thus obtained is rolled together to thereby obtain a clad member in which the different kind of material is embedded in the longitudinal direction of the clad base material. This kind of clad member is then sliced into pieces to use each of these sliced pieces as a component part for electrical contact of a bimetal, or the like.
The above-described clad member can be manufactured relatively cheaply However, the strip-like material to be embedded into the clad base material extends in the longitudinal direction of the clad base material "a." Therefore, if an electrical component part such as shown in FIG. 2 is manufactured by means, e.g., of pressing the assembly, there is a disadvantage in that the embedded strip-like material c will be partly wasted as a trash. In case the strip-like material c is made of a rare metal or a noble metal, the loss by this waste becomes enormous. Even if the trash is recovered for reuse, the increase in the product cost is inevitable